But the general idea for it is that it is a late game item which makes elves more practical since their is normally not a reason to pick elf over gnome.

Schadenfreude potion and any level-up catapulting strategy will favor elves over gnomes. I still hold that an item that only functions for one race is entirely inappropriate. Items should work for everyone, even if they may be better suited for specific races.

Maybe it could be +X mana from outside sources, not including items

This would be completely broken on its own. With JJ, extra mana boosters, and a fairly tame conversion loadout on an elf you could build up around +15 bonus mana with ease.

By comparison the mage plate is +1 MP / -5% attack bonus every two levels (maxing out at +5 MP for -25% attack bonus) and the elven boots are +3 MP / +15% magic resist. Quite simply such a mana-boosting effect would be unprecedentedly powerful, and would require drastic downsides to be balanced. Like, probably disabling mana regeneration altogether.

Secondly, effects that explicitly magnify other bonuses are unheardof in Desktop Dungeons. The closest is the interaction between base attack and attack bonus, but that's a fundamental game mechanic. In addition to probably requiring a complete overhaul of deity balance, it probably has way too many abusive applications.

While it is true you could rush this item to be proc, but you probably would be drained early game resources, which is a fair trade off for how I imaged the item.

Hardly; the benefits accrued from double mana regeneration would easily compensate for the loss of a preferred prep.

To be honest, the reason I am doing this is more so food for thought then I want the item. I see why are making heavy criticism but at the same time remember that I am not throwing out concepts not necessarily suggestions. Right now I am out of ideas though.

Mana is actually a very tricky thing to mess with in DD. It's taken us quite a while to find a way to make things that give extra mana resources without completely breaking game balance. The old Crystal Ball would be devastating to the way the beta works at the moment.

Nah, elves do fine relative to gnomes, they just require more planning. The Acid Caster is a build that revolves around getting a 20-25 mana pool right out of the gate and then using that leverage to gain a level every fight. The result is that you get 10-15 extra mana over baseline "for free," every level. A gnome can't keep up with that kind of massive resource gain. The gnome is better at mitigating mana burn and for saving up his resources for one massive endgame spike, but a well-played elf will have more resources overall. The exception is the dreaded JJ Gnome, which gets the best of both worlds and is tremendous fun to play if you can pull it off.

Well, the only other thing I could think about is an item that drains mana but increases mana regen. Their is several ways I could think it could work1- Subtract X mana, but increase mana regen by 1 2- Same as one, but last for one turn.3- The item subtracts mana, but gives you bonus regen.

I occasionally wonder what would have happened if we'd given players 100 starting mana and adjusted all the other systems to cater for that. It would definitely help with extending the item design in the way proposed. Though such a big change ...

Nandrew wrote:I occasionally wonder what would have happened if we'd given players 100 starting mana and adjusted all the other systems to cater for that. It would definitely help with extending the item design in the way proposed. Though such a big change ...

While it would offer granularity, it also would take away a lot of the simplicity of the current small numbers.

That said, would it really be that hard to multiply everything by 10 (or divide by 10 in the case of Mystera)?